1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.
1240 – Mongols led by Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kyiv after an 8 day siege; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive
1424 – Don Alfonso V of Aragon grants Barcelona the right to exclude Jews
1631 – 1st predicted transit of Venus (Kepler) is observed
1735 – In London, French surgeon Claudius Amyand peformed the first successful appendectomy at St. George’s Hospital. The patient was an 11-year old boy that had swallowed a pin.
1774 – Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.
1790 – The U.S. Congress moved from New York to Philadelphia.
1825 – US President John Quincy Adams suggests establishment of a national observatory
1849 – Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland for the 2nd and final time
1862 – US President Abraham Lincoln orders hanging of 39 Santee Sioux Indians
1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.
1876 – 1st crematorium in US begins operation, Washington, Pennsylvania
1876 – US Electoral College casts their votes in the disputed election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden; two sets of conflicting results are returned to Congress the next day
1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.
1883 – “Ladies’ Home Journal” was published for the first time.
1884 – The construction of the Washington Monument was completed by Army engineers. The project took 34 years.
1889 – Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans. He was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.
1907 – In Monongah, WV, 361 people were killed in America’s worst mine disaster.
1912 – China votes for universal human rights
1917 – More than 1,600 people died when two munitions ships collided in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1917 – Finland proclaimed independence from Russia. The declaration ended 109 years of Finland being a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire. The Northern European country came under the control of the Russian Empire in 1809. After the October Revolution in Russia, which created the Soviet Union, the Finnish Parliament declared independence on this day.
1921 – The Catholic Irish Free State was created as a self-governing dominion of Britain when an Anglo-Irish treaty was signed.
1923 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge became the first president to give a presidential address that was broadcast on radio.
1926 – In Italy, Benito Mussolini introduced a tax on bachelors.
1933 – Ban on James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in US lifted
1940 – Gestapo arrest German resistance fighter/poster artist Helen Ernst
1947 – Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by U.S. President Truman.
1956 – Against the background of the Soviet invasion of Hungary the nations square off at the Melbourne Olympics in a famous water polo match; game called off with Hungary leading 4-0 and near riot halted by police; Hungary goes on to win gold medal
1957 – AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters were readmitted in 1987.
1957 – America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed when the satellite blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL.
1964 – “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” 1st airs on TV
1965 – 2 trucks crashed into a crowd of dancers in Sotouboua Togo, kills 125
1965 – Pakistan’s Islamic Ideology Advisory Committee recommends that Islamic Studies be made a compulsory subject for Muslim students from primary to graduate level.
1969 – 300,000 attend Altamont free concert in California, featuring The Rolling Stones. Marred by violence and four deaths.
1973 – Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the vice-president of the United States after vice-president Spiro Agnew resigned.
1975 – Balcombe Street Siege: for 6 days, four Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers hold two hostages at an apartment in London, England
1977 – South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana, The Republic of Bophuthatswana was never internationally recognized. In 1994, after a series of coups, it reintegrated with South Africa.
1982 – 11 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed when a bomb exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland. The Irish National Liberation Army was responsible for planting the bomb.
1983 – In Jerusalem, a bomb planted on a bus exploded killing six Israelis and wounding 44.
1985 – Congressional negotiators reached an agreement on a deficit-cutting proposal that later became the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law.
1989 – The worst mass shooting in Canadian history occurred when a man gunned down 14 women at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering. The man then killed himself.
1989 – Mafia drug kingpin bombs security force at Bogota, kills 52
1990 – Iraq announced that it would release all its 2,000 foreign hostages.
1990 – U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle was enshrined in the Little League Museum’s Hall of Excellence.
1992 – In India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque. The following two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting resulted in at least 2,000 people being killed.
1993 – Former priest James R. Porter was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison. Porter had admitted molesting 28 children in the 1960s.
1994 – Orange County, CA, filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion. The county is one of the richest in the U.S. and became the largest municipality to file for bankruptcy.
1998 – In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier.
1998 – Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour connected the first two building blocks of the international space station in the shuttle cargo bay.
2001 – The Canadian province of Newfoundland is renamed Newfoundland and Labrador
2006 – NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars
2012 – 7 people are killed and 770 injured during Egyptian protests
2013 – Pope Francis gives his ascent to a proposal to create a permanent post on the Pontifical Commission on cases of sin and sexual abuse of minors
2017 – “Supermassive” most distant black hole discovery announced by astronomers in journal “Nature”, 13 billion light-years away, 800 x bigger than the Sun
2017 – Time Magazine names their Person of the Year “The Silence Breakers”, people who came forward to report sexual misconduct
2018 – Oldest-known plague sample found in 4,900-year-old remains of 20-year old woman in Gökhem, southern Sweden published in “Cell”
2020 – US President Donald Trump orders about 700 troops withdrawn from Somalia
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
